4th edition afterword:

SPECIAL AFTERWORD
to the Loompanics Edition of PRINCIPIA DISCORDIA
G.H. Hill, San Francisco, 1979
All Rites Reversed (K) Reprint What You Like
INTERVIEW WITH NORTON CABAL
by Gypsie Skripto, Special Correspondent

It has been ten years since I net the mysterious Malaclypse the Younger. I
was free lancing for the underground papers and went to POEE Hear Temple at
555 Battery Street to try for an interview.

I found him in the Temple PO Box busy wrapping up the new Fourth Edition
of PRINCIPIA. He seemed impatient with me, insisting that he didn't have the
time or inclination for foolish questions from reporters. Undaunted, I burst
out with questions like whether he preferred Panama Red or Acapulco Gold and
how the fuck did we manage to fit inside of a tiny post office box and other
things apropos a naive young semiliterate dropout hippy writer. He asked me
if I wanted to drop mescaline and fuck all night and said he knew how to turn
himself into a unicorn and there might be room for a tiny interview on the
cover of the PRINCIPIA if I wanted to work for the GREATER POOP so I said
sure, OK, I've never dropped mescaline in a post office box before.

It turned out I was among the last to see Malaclypse. As subsequent issues
of GREATER POOP revealed, he was to disappear and POEE business was to be
assumed by his students at Norton Cabal. Professor Ignotum P. Ignotius,
Department of Comparative Realities, was assigned the Trust of the POEE
Scruple and Rev. Dr. Occupant became Keeper of the Box. The newly published
copies of PRINCIPIA were distributed by Mad Malik, Block Disorganizer, who
had distribution contacts with the Aluminum Bavariati. Practical relations
remained in the hands of concept artist G. Hill.

When the 1000 PRINCIPIAS were gone the GREATER POOP stopped publishing,
Head Temple closed down and the Cabal just seemed to evaporate. Finally even
the box was closed. But over the years I noticed that copies were still
circulating, and that independent Discordian Cabals would occasionally pop
out of nowhere (and still do). And I would wonder what ever happened to
Malaclypse.

When I read the ILLUMINATUS trilogy I resolved to again find and interview
the denizens of Joshua Norton Cabal of the Discordian Society.

As I cabled over Nob to San Francisco's Station 'O' Post Office I couldn't
help but wonder at Goddess' hand in assigning street addresses to Her
outposts. Mal2 had told me that Good Lord Omar always filed everything under
"O" for OUT OF FILE.

"Maya is marvelous" I was thinking when I rapped on the little metal door
and was greeted warmly by a huge beard who introduced himself as Professor
Ignotius. He ushered me into a spacious wood paneled and tapestry hung parlor
where three others were laughing and passing around a wine jug. The sunny one
in a tunic was the Reverend Doctor Occupant, the trim khaki and jeans was Mad
Malik and the wine jug claimed to be Hill. I got the recorder on....

GYPSIE SKRIPTO [in response to a question]: ...1969 but only briefly. I
guess I missed you guys.

MAD MALIK: No wonder, he was pretty much a one man show then. We were just
his students and were usually off on errands. You worked for the POOP?

Gypsie: Well, for one night anyway. The interview is in the PRINCIPIA.

REV. DR. OCCUPANT: Malik was the only one he would ever let write for the
POOP or get on the letterhead.

Gypsie: Did you [Malik] have higher authority than the others?

Malik: No, [but I was allowed to speak in the POOP] because [Malaclypse
the Younger] hated politics. He was infuriated with Johnson and Nixon over
Viet Nam because it was turning the renaissance into a political revolution
and was stealing his sacred thunder. So he trained me in Zenarchy, which he
learned from Omar, and I was the official anarcho-pacifist for the Cabal.
Also I was liaison to The Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria, the Chicago
Discordians. Later Omar activated the Hung Mung Cong Tong and ELF, on
Zenarchist principles, and also Operation Mindfuck. I was also into those.
Though at the time I was masquerading in GREATER POOP as a created cabbage to
throw off the FBI.

Gypsie [to Hill]: Since you wrote it, I take it you are an anarchist?

G.H. Hill: Since then I have given up anarchy. Too many rules-- hating the
government and all that stuff.

IGNOTUM PER IGNOTIUS: It's like hating your own fantasies.

Malik: [Anarchy] is also standing up and proceeding forward, fantasy rule
or not. The condition is the same.

Occupant: Brother needs some wine!

Malik: We have had this argument before, Reverend Doctor Brother. But wine
before platitudes, fill it up.

Gypsie [to Hill]: And pacifism?

Hill: I'm not sure I ever was one. Mal2 was not, Malik was. Personally I
accepted self defense yet I could never reconcile that with the ideal. I
finally gave up on that one too. Actually I just gave up on idealism.

Ignotius: Idealism lives with rules. Realism lives with rocks.

Hill: Yeah. I get along better with rocks.

Malik: Mal2 once told me that pacifism was a dilemma. If everybody was a
pacifist then everything would be perfect. But nobody is going to be a
pacifist unless I am first. But if I am and somebody else is not, then I get
screwed. He said that there were five choices under that circumstance. The
first was napalming farmers and the second was executing your parents. The
third was hypocrisy, the fourth was cowardice, and the fifth was to swallow
the dilemma. Zenarchists are trained in dilemma swallowing.

Occupant: So are other Erisians, like POEE.

Ignotius: That is characteristic of the Discordian perspective.

Hill: But of course training contradicts Discordian principles.

Malik: Oh so what. Contradictions are nothing to Discordians.

Occupant: Dilemma, Schilmemma. [to Gypsie]: What do you think of this,
pretty ma'am? We don't get to hear your thoughts.

Occupant: You were inhabited by Malaclypse the Younger. He caused you to
create roles and those roles are being performed by us spirits.

Ignotius: A perfectly normal pagan relationship.

Hill: Well you can look at it like that if you want to, but I created Mal2
to my specifications just as I conceived all the rest of you.

Occupant: You didn't invent Eris. She caused you to think you created the
spirit of Malaclypse.

Hill: Oh bull! Besides, I changed her so much the Greeks would never
recognize her.

Occupant: That's what She wanted!

Ignotius: Deities change things around all the time.

Malik: What you don't realize is that a spirit has a self identity.

Hill: Nope. A spirit is a product of definition and the one who is doing
the defining around here is me. Your identity is what I say it is. Just to
prove it, I'm going to change your name.

SINISTER DEXTER: It's OK with me. Fate is fate. I never much liked "Mad
Malik" anyway.

Ignotius: Besides people confused him with Joe Malik in ILLUMINATUS.

Dexter: I sort of enjoyed the confusion part.

Occupant: Doesn't prove anything anyway.

Gypsie: That name sounds familiar. Where is it from?

Hill: It's a name I came up with in the old days and never used it much.
Its on page 38 of the PRINCIPIA referring to Vice President Spiro Agnew. I
always thought I invented it but now it sounds like a Stan Freberg name now
that I think about it. It may have stuck in my preconscious memory from early
TV.

Gypsie: Can you use it without his permission?

Hill: If it is his? I don't know. I hope so. It means "left right" in
Latin and is a perfect name for a libertarian anarchist. Actually in my kind
of art the question of what can I use freely and what can I not is a very
tricky problem.

Gypsie: How do you mean?

Hill: Well, take a collage for example. Like the early one on page 36 of
the PRINCIPIA. Each little piece was extracted from some larger work created
by some other artist and published and maybe copyrighted. I find them in
newspapers and magazines mostly. Often from ads. With a collage you select
and extract from your environment and then assemble into an original
relationship.

The PRINCIPIA itself is a collage. A conceptual collage. All of it happens
simultaneously. But visually it is a montage, passing through time, like a
book does.

There is a lot of pirated stuff in the PRINCIPIA, especially in the
margins. But also I sympathize with artists who must own and sell their works
to earn a living. Art, like knowledge, should be free fodder for everyone.
But it isn't.

It is perplexing.

Gypsie: Where did all the things in PRINCIPIA come from?

Hill: Well, a full answer would take another book in itself. Most of the
writing credited to a name is a true person and almost always a different
name means a different person. Most of the non-credited, you know,
Malaclypse, text is mine although some things credited to either Mal2 or Omar
were actually co-written and passed back and forth and rewritten by each of
us. The marginalia, dingbats, and pasted in titles and heads and things came
from wherever I found them--some of which is original but uncredited
Discordian output, like the page head on 12 and other pages which is from a
series of satiric memo pads from Our Peoples Underworld Cabal. All page
layout is mine and some whole graphics like the Sacred Chao and the Hodge
Podge Transformer are mine but mostly I just found stuff and integrated it.
Mostly I did concept, say 50% of the writing, 10% of the graphics, all of the
layout.

Gypsie: Specifically, what are some of the sources?

Hill: Well, the poem on the front cover is by Walt Kelly and was spoken by
one of his characters in Pogo. The government seals starting from page 1 are
from a book of sample seals from the U.S. Government Printing Office. Western
Union on page 6 got into the act because I used to be a teletype operator and
had access to blank forms. Rubber stamps came from all over the place and
some, like the apple on page 27, I carved myself. A few I ordered to my
specification, like on page 1. The quote on the top of page 8 might be from
Barnum, I'm not sure. The jumping man on page 12 is from an advertisement. I
recognize the style--a popular commercial artist--but I don't know his name.
The Chinese on the page is a grocery ad, I think. The Norton money on page 14
is historic, plus my little additions. The apple on page 17, as well as the
triangle on 23 and the Sacred Chao on 50 are, believe it or not, pasteups of
mimeographs, from Seattle Cabal. That group produced the best damn
mimeography I've ever seen. The Lick Here Box on page 23 is one of many
tidbits making the rounds in alternative/underground newspapers in those
days. Trip 5 page header on 29 was a chapter title in one of Tim Leary's
books. The Knight on the bull with the TV antenna on his helmet on page 46
came from a very artistic magazine called Horseshit and put out by two
brothers from Long Beach. I don't remember their names. Wonderful
magazine.

Occupant: Eris told Mal2 what to use and where to find it.

Hill: Yeah, in a way that is right. That is why my name does not appear
anywhere on the PRINCIPIA and why it was published with a broken copyright--
Reprint What You Like. I knew I was taking liberties and didn't want my
intentions to be misunderstood. It was an experiment and was intended to be
an underground work and that involves a different set of ethics than
commercial work.

Gypsie: There are no real names at all?

Hall: Oh, some. Camden Benares is a real name because he legally changed
his original name to his Holy Name. Also, instead of using Mordecai
Malignatus I used Bob Wilson's real name on page 12 because Werewolf Bridge
was a work before Discordianism. And of course real people like Neils Bohr
crop up in quotes.

Gypsie: What do you think about the PRINCIPIA now? Would you want to
change it?

Hill: I consider it a successful work and I wouldn't want to change it. In
some ways it is immature and I am not the same person I was 10 years ago, but
it accomplished the objectives I set for myself and it has the effect I
wanted it to have. There are a few errors though.

Gypsie: Like what?

Hill: Oh, I changed a quote from Tom Gnostic on page 61 and I don't think
he ever did forgive me for it. He's right. Starbuck's Pebbles should have
been preceded by the Myth of Starbuck which was being saved for something
else and never got used. I should have used it when I had the chance. And
then Eris did a neat little trick on me by having IBM make the Greek
selectric typewriter element not coincide with all the characters on their
keyboard. So the little "kallisti" that appears on the title page and lastly
on the back cover came out "kallixti" and I was too dumb to know the
difference.

Gypsie: Will there ever be a Fifth Edition?

Hill: There already is a Fifth Edition, by Mal2. It is a one page telegram
that reduces everything to an infinite aum. I found it at Western Union where
a machine got stuck and kicked out hundreds of pages of nothing but m's. He
made it the Fifth Edition and then left.

Principia/Malaclypse was a very personal work for me and actually took 10
years to culminate. It was one single statement that included my adolescence
in the 50's and my young adulthood in the 60's. When I finally had the
paste-ups done I knew that I had finished it. That is why, quote, Malaclypse
left. I knew it was finished. I didn't know exactly what it was, but it was
done.

Occupant: See?

Gypsie: Earlier you said that you met your objectives. Just what were
those objectives?

Hill: Well, that's hard to answer because it kept refining itself over the
years. In 1969 I mainly though of myself as a cosmic clown and I set out to
prove, by demonstration, that a deity can be anything at all.

In other words, people invent gods and not the other way around. Later I
decided that I was doing some kind of conceptual art.

In the 50's my culture taught me that I was created by and for a deity, a
specific male deity, and that all other deities are FALSE. Yet my growing
experience showed me that any deity is true in some sense and false in some
other sense. So I set out to do what my society told me is impossible--make a
real religion from a patently absurd deity.

In the 50's a female deity was blasphemy. In the 70's a humorous deity is
still considered impossible, ridiculous, and blasphemous. As far as I'm
concerned, I have proven my point. Eris is a real deity and even though I
don't promote Erisianism as a serious religion....

Occupant: I do!

Dexter: You speak for yourself.

Ignotius: Here, here.

Hill: ...I do point out that it makes just as much sense from its own
perspective as all the others do from each of their own perspectives.

Occupant: I think paganism is a valid spiritual path. I encourage
Erisianism because it makes fun of itself. I think this is healthy.

Ignotius: If you can live rewardingly with Goddess Eris you can live with
any deity, including none at all.

Dexter: I don't much go for the worship business but I argee with Occupant
about the spirit of the thing. We live in a time of turmoil, the whole planet
is in a state of change. If we, as a species, cower from the confusion then
we die with the dying. This is revolution.

Ignotius: I am an athiest myself. There is no Greg Hill.

[laughter]

Gypsie [to Hill]: What do you think of ILLUMINATUS?

Hill: Oh, I love it. I was finishing PRINCIPIA when Shea and Wilson were
working on ILLUMINATUS. It took Dell five years to publish it...maybe that is
significant. The 1969 Discordian Society was a mail network between
independent writers of various kinds. Norton Cabal was just me and my
characters and I used the other Cabals as sort of a laboratory. In return
other Discordians would bounce their stuff off of me. We would toss in ideas
and anybody could take anything out. It was a concept stew. The exchanging of
ideas and techniques broadened and encouraged all of us.

I like ILLUMINATUS for the surrealism. A very effective method of
writing.

Ignotius: I got misquoted. Worse, I wasn't even in that scene and if I had
been then I would have said something else.

Dexter [to Ignotius]: That was me in that scene.

Ignotius: Oh, is that what that was?

Dexter: He got our names mixed up.

Hill: He got mixed up about me too, in COSMIC
TRIGGER. Bob says that when Oswald was buying the assassination rifle, my
girlfriend was printing the first edition of PRINCIPIA on Jim Garrison's
Xerox. It wasn't my girlfriend, it was Kerry's; it wasn't the FIRST ED
PRINCIPIA, it was some earlier Discordian thought; it wasn't Garrison's
Xerox, it was his mimeograph; and it wasn't just before Kennedy was shot but
a couple of years before that.*

The FIRST ED PRINCIPIA, by the way, was reproduced at Xerox Corp when
xerography was a new technology. Which was my second New Orleans trip in
1965. I worked for a guy on Bourbon Street who was a Xerox salesman by
day.

Dexter: I think that George Dorn took too much guff from Hagbard. If
someone pulls a weapon on me, I'm more inclined to either leave or kill the
sonofabitch.

Gypsie: ...what I really want to know is how can we all fit inside of a
tiny little post office box?

Dexter[to Gypsie]: It's a telegram for you, from Mal2.

Gypsie: To me?

[Paper tearing]

Gypsie [reading]: "If I told everybody how they could live inside of a
post office box then everybody would stop paying landlords and go live inside
their post office boxes. It would collapse the building! Can you imagine,
post offices collapsing all over the country, the hemisphere, the PLANET! The
whole world's communication system would be destroyed. No,no, I must not say.
I dare not!